Once More Down the Rabbit Hole
by bkgrl
Summary: "I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but we catch nothing except wind." Maleficent would know the tangy sweet textures of love, weather the bitter sharp flavour of fear but she would osculate the silky smoothness that was greed. Dark fairytale AU.


_**A/N: This is the beginning of a new series for me of random retellings and other interpretations of fairy tales. I have a few other ones picked out but this first one really stood out in my mind. Hope you enjoy. This first one is rather short, just a taste really. I plan on expanding upon it later. **_

_**Thanks goes out to Jen for editing and of course Nessa for the fantastic cover art and Nicole for the gorgeous cover art that has been published on tumblr and will likely become the Maleficent Novella cover.**_

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_**Maleficent**_

"_**I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind."**_

**Michel de Montaigne**

The human mind can conceive, process and desperately attach itself to innumerable feelings and thoughts but none as potent as love, fear and most importantly, greed. Greed after all is the inception and impetus of so many things and abrogate of even more.

Maleficent would know the tangy sweet textures of love, weather the bitter sharp flavor of fear but she would osculate the silky, smoothness that was greed. The things that were always so close but yet would forever be a little too far.

When she was two and ten Maleficent was sold to a man by her father, in exchange for a six year old mare. Neither of her parents even bid her goodbye as they hastily packed her up and sent her south with a man that was twice a widower. His first wife he had been lost to childbearing and the other to unknown causes, ones that Maleficent later decided likely had more to do with his hands than any God's will.

Then, long before she became the dragon, set eyes on Aurora or went to war with King Stefan and his Christian Crusaders, in that lugubrious hut squashed among those raggedy fields in Champagne, Maleficent was only Malle. A scared girl with bruised thighs and black eyes, who lived in world of an obloquy orchestra that was manned and directed by her husband alone.

They lived on the outskirts of the Troyes. Far away enough from anyone that no one would hear her cry at night or her screams during the days. Those first three years of her marriage- the end of her childhood were formidable in more ways than one. They became the coals that were lit to start the slow burn in the belly of the dragon.

Had things been different, had Malle been given another life, Maleficent would have never been born. Wars would have been left unsought, Picardy unmolested by Maleficent's reach and Aurora left to a balmy childhood of her own.

But it was greed you see, that changed it all- set everything in motion: so many grimy hands, trying to force their fingers into the same pot. There had to be regulations, rules set, kingdoms conquered and men burned to inoculate them all from this plague. And Malle, sweet nervous Malle, little did she know she would be the champion of this great cleansing.

Henri had never made his reasoning for purchasing her any great secret. He was in need of a son to continue his squalid line and Malle would be his dam, or so he thought. The day Malle met her future she had already been wed for seven years and still there was no child.

In the beginning when they were first wed Malle used to wish for a child, just as ardently as he. She would pray just as the other women of Troyes did, that she too would be blessed and perhaps then Henri would stop. Soon however, Malle learned that it wasn't a child Henri truly desired but instead only her misery. He lived for it, like a man perishing from unquenchable thirst, reveling in her fear as if it were the only water he would ever know. And still the longer she went without, the more impatient and flagitious Henri became. So much so, that without a son to occupy his time he was left with idle hands and a wandering imagination, one that had a penchant for games to satiate his sadistic appetites.

Yes, Henri loved his ticky-tacky, spontaneous, horrid little adventures. Ones that called for bizarre raffish sexual acts that compelled him to strip Malle naked and bid her to run. To where? It didn't matter. There was no place in particular he wished for her to go or that she felt compelled to flee. For there was nowhere to hide in this land that seemed to be his, but still Malle would try.

Slipping from her cloth skin, Malle would bare her bruises unashamedly, accustomed to them now as she raced through the fields outside that dilapidated home. At the conception of this new game, she would run for hours, circling the fields, hoping Henri would pass out drunk before he found her. Malle would pray the cold would get him before it slowed her, but it never worked that way in the end. He seemed to always know where she was or where she would go, as if he could smell her fear- track her by it like it were her own personal scent.

And when he'd find her cold and weary, he'd corner her like an animal caught in a canibear trap, cackling at her misery. Malle's skin would tear like thin sheets of parchment in the winter chill, soaked in liquid that coated her skin in wet sloppy strokes. The blood he drew from her between her legs and from her face would warm Malle briefly in pain. It was a small consolation while he raped her, before it froze to her brittle shell like pools from a stream.

On her back or at times on her knees, with her face pushed into the frozen ground, Malle could have sworn that above his grunts and obloquy praises she could hear her mother singing to her once more. A song of her childhood, something faint and no longer quite familiar that was meant to be comforting, a song about a great love and happy endings-

_Once upon a dream_

How fitting it all was. For wasn't this life the dreams of childhood?

It was the lyrics of fairy tales and knight's songs only Malle wasn't the princess in this story. No, instead she was just another nameless character and Henri surely was not the prince nor was he the villain. Henri was too lowly of creature to be of such great importance in this story. He was only another foot soldier of malice, a foolish louche with no mind for the possibility of retribution.

Malle would never give Henri a child. Six she would carry and six she would lose. It seemed to be an endless circle that had no conceivable end. She was trapped and suffocating under the labors of Henri's imagination. And she would have died like that, Malle would have perished sweat drenched and glassy eyed in childbirth, bruised and bloody in that little hut had it not been for Ruth.

_A witch,_her husband would call the midwife and just that once, he was right. She was a witch, a midwife and so much more to Malle. She was the only one that heard her screams and responded in kind.

Down by the rivers where the ground was always damp and muddy, the witch of the River Seine lived alone. Only she did not call herself a witch. She did not draw the masses of hypocritical frenzied Christians with their wooden posts, ropes and fire. To the world, Ruth Navarre was a midwife, hidden away and quickly forgotten.

If Malle stood outside her front door and squinted to the east she could see Ruth's little home hidden there amongst the fog. The only other tenant out so far from Troyes, it was so strange a place and so convenient at that, that when they would lie to together, lips wrapped around the other's skin, hands and hair, legs and eyes tangled up in hemp linens, Malle would know Ruth's existence was not pure coincidence.

She had been waiting for Malle, knowing she would come, from that first time down by the water, when they'd met.

_Bile lurched up Malle's throat, trickling past her epiglottis before spewing from her mouth. On her knees, bucket on the ground and hand buried in mud, Malle's onyx hair fell down around her face like a privacy curtain- shielding her from the world outside. _

"_How far are you along?" A voice called out, southward down the bank. _

_Wiping her mouth and parting her hair Malle looked up through a haze of nausea and a splitting headache to find her. Ruth had ivory skin and wore her henna red hair braided and bound, woven into more than one design. She was older than Malle, well into her second decade of life. It seemed to be only the difference of a few years but later it would become so many more. _

"_Excuse me?" Malle replied, arching her back so that both knees were planted firmly in the muck but her dress was already filthy as was her face and the rest of her, so what did it matter anyhow. _

_The strange woman smiled, her long porcelain fingers reaching out to Malle as she approached, "You are with child… how far along?"_

"_I do not know," Malle replied still in a fog as she pulled herself to standing. _

"_When did you last bleed?"Ruth questioned. Standing arm's length from her now, Malle could make out the soft features of her face: thin lips and hazel almond shaped eyes. _

_Before Malle could answer, Ruth was there, eburnean fingers palming Malle's belly with no sense of personal boundaries or consideration for formal introductions. She acted as though it were the most natural thing in this world for them to be so close and intimate. _

"_It is no matter now…" Ruth began, answering her own question, her words soft as she examined her, "This child will not come, nor will the next."_

_Malle shook her head trying to lift the flummox that clouded her mind, making river nymphs walk in daylight, and stuttered, "Excuse me?"_

"_It will pass from you before the next full moon," Ruth replied, catching Malle's eye as the pair stared at one another in strange wonderment like they first humans of earth discovering each other. _

_Maybe it was just a guess or perhaps something more: the power of words forging destiny. Whatever it was, Ruth was right. The thing that grew like a parasite inside Malle, withered and died not soon after, passing from her as though Malle had found the cure for such illness making herself a vessel no longer. _

_Ruth gazed at Malle as though she was meeting her closest and most dear friend after a long absence, her fingers finding Malle's clammy cheek in a blink. Ruth brushed dirty knotted strands of atrous neglected hair from her face and examined the blue, greenish yellow marks that peppered the girl's cheek and the socket of her eye. _

"_His time will come soon," Ruth promised her lips placing a kiss on the fresh bruise and another on Malle's eyelid. Eyes closed her body swayed slightly in her dehydrated state, missing Ruth's promise and the brief hesitation afterwards. _

_Malle was busy trying to focus her energy on holding still, afraid that if she moved too quickly this creature would disappear but at last her efforts were in vain. She was lost again in the fog, sifting weightless, swimming in petrichor and the scent of ash that was Ruth. _

"_Who are you?" Malle whispered eyes still closed, completely concupiscent in that state. _

_This was the moment that Malle would miss the answer to her inquires. All the things that Ruth wished so desperately that she could say to her then:_

_Finally I found you…._

_I am here now…._

_Do not be afraid…._

_But mostly, the thing that lingered on her tongue, begging to be spilled out into this world as a naked, ardent confession- _

_I love you. _

_Alas, however, Ruth said nothing. It was too soon, a century of waiting and still she tried to be reserved. And so she swallowed it. Lumpy and acrid in its appetite, it stuck in her throat unwilling to be shoved down for even a little while longer._

_When Malle opened her eyes, Ruth had left, just as she had feared. No further explanation or even a formal introduction in her wake, the witch and midwife of the river Seine wandered back down the bank, yards away from Malle. _

_Perhaps it was a dream, the desperate imaging of a lonely woman or perhaps not. _

"_What is your name?!" Malle yelled, picking up her skirts and stumbling down the bank, reaching out to Ruth as though she might catch her. _

_The witch turned then, cinnabar braid swaying behind her, "Ruth," she called back, a queer smile spreading across her lips, for she knew that would not be the end of her and Malle. _

No, it was only the beginning of what would be the most important relationship of Malle's existence. It was the inception of Malle's greed for things in life that would never quite be within her grasp. That first flicker of desire and hope for something more: something that could only be found _once upon a dream_.

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**Like I said before, I am quite seriously considering making Maleficent into a Novella separate from the other works here. If you are interested let me know and I will continue forward, regardless please if you feel so inclined- REVIEW!**


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